1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to storage networks and more particularly, to sharing storage in a cluster environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
Cluster storage environments typically use shared storage networks, such as storage area networks (SAN) or network attached systems (NAS) to provide data storage services for multiple servers. In particular, a cluster system includes multiple data processing systems (i.e., nodes) that are networked and share hardware and software. To improve availability and speed, each server included in the cluster systems may have its own storage cache system, which in many cases may be a flash device attached directly to the server, for storing most frequently accessed data. Typically, a cache system of one server is not shared with other servers within the network. As each server in the network operates at varying workloads, some of the servers may have very high cache utilization while others may have low cache utilization at any given time.